Among mammalia we have the carnivora, which from Eocene times have been becoming more and more specialised, till they have culminated in the cat and dog tribes, which have reached a degree of perfection both in structure and intelligence fully equal to that of any other animals.

In another line of development, the herbivora have been specialised for living solely on vegetable food till they have culminated in the sheep, the cattle, the deer, and the antelopes.

The horse tribe, commencing with an early four-toed ancestor in the Eocene age, has increased in size and in perfect adaptation of feet and teeth to a life on open plains, and has reached its highest perfection in the horse, the ass, and the zebra.

In birds, also, we see an advance from the imperfect tooth-billed and reptile-tailed birds of the secondary epoch, to the wonderfully developed falcons, crows, and swallows of our time.

So, the ferns, lycopods, conifers, and monocotyledons of the palaeozoic and mesozoic rocks, have developed into the marvellous wealth of forms of the higher dicotyledons that now adorn the earth.
But this remarkable advance in the higher and larger groups does not imply any universal law of progress in organisation, because we have at the same time numerous examples (as has been already pointed out) of the persistence of lowly organised forms, and also of absolute degradation or degeneration.